Midweek Mention...Beasts of the Southern Wild

SPEAKER_03 0:12

This is the start of Flood Week, I guess. And this movie, which was a new one to me, is Beasts of the Southern Wild.

SPEAKER_01 0:21

I did notice that the UK Meta Office is forecasting lots of floods for this year. Yeah. So this is a topical. Yeah, absolutely. And we had what, Storm China was it? Before Dave as well recently.

SPEAKER_00 0:38

Storm Dave.

SPEAKER_03 0:40

When there were tsunamis in Japan today. Today of an earthquake. Well that's quite common, right? They get them every year, apparently. They get at least one a year.

SPEAKER_02 0:49

Are we expecting more films on floods then over the years?

SPEAKER_03 0:52

Well, our main episode will probably feature some flooding, yeah. Okay. And we may even have top five floods to look forward to on Friday. Potentially. Wow. A deluge. But this is Beasts of the Southern Wild. Yeah. Directed by a guy called Ben Zeitlin. Zeitlin, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:08

And it began life as a one-act play. Yeah, you see. Called Juicy and Delicious. Written by UC Alibar. That delicious in this. The Crabs, I suppose. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And he they made it, they were like a commune. They sort of like lived on site and made it with 16mm film rather than digital. And like everybody lived together, nobody was paid anything. All that sort of stuff, like a real labour of passion, I guess. And everybody in it was a non-professional, including two really astonishing lead performances, actually, from I can't even begin to pronounce this young lady's first name.

SPEAKER_03 1:45

Yeah, it's a lot of you it's a really top scrabble score if you could get this. Yeah. It's Quevenshani? Quevensani? Yeah, maybe. Q U V E N Z H A N E with an accent.

SPEAKER_02 2:00

Ryus, I think you pronounced that.

SPEAKER_00 2:02

Well, sh Hushpoppy is her name in the film. Yeah, the guy's name in the film. It was definitely sensational. Yeah, just use that as simple.

SPEAKER_01 2:09

Um the other guy was Dwight Henry, was his name. He plays the dad, Wink. Yeah. And he worked at a bakery, and the guy who made the film went like every his his business was affected by Hurricane Katrina, which this film sort of loosely deals with the aftermath of, and his baker is affected by it, and he went every day to convince him to come and work on this film, and he was still baking for the crew every day as part of the the shoot. So quite a bit of a little background story.

SPEAKER_03 2:36

Yeah, so like you say, it's uh it's not like a super happy movie. My missus bailed out on my missus doesn't like a film if it's got a sort of child in distress. But she was not gonna like this. She's bailed out this the first time that Wink kind of collapsed, so I guess about 20 minutes in. But even before then, we've had it's like a really impoverished sort of area where they live called the bathtub. Yeah, which is beyond the levee. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 2:58

This kind of It's on the side of the levee that's near the water, basically. Well, we do see that late first. It actually opens with with Wallace hushed hush puppy, like dressed in a white vest and orange pants and like these stupid welly boots. And she's like picking up these chickens because there's like a heartbeat motif. She listens to the heartbeats of the chickens. She says, Oh, if you listen to them, they'll tell you what there's they're talking in code. Most of the time they want food, sometimes they want a poo, but other times they're talking about the universe or something. Oh, they're talking about things I can't understand, is what she says.

SPEAKER_02 3:33

Is this in New Orleans then? Is it around that way area or am I miles away? It's fictional, the setting.

SPEAKER_01 3:40

It was actually Louisiana.

SPEAKER_00 3:43

So it's down south. Wherever the Cajun people are.

SPEAKER_03 3:46

Because they do talk about the levy, and obviously you can like instantly then like put onto it Hurricane Katrina.

SPEAKER_01 3:52

Well, I think there were genuine shots of of the aftermath of Katrina in this, I think, aren't there? I don't know. There certainly are some anyway. So the dad sort of turns up. You don't even know it's the dad at first. They live like in these trailers separately. She has her own. She's six years old and lives on her own. Wow, independent. Yeah. And there's no there's no real sign of mother except a kind of shrine made out of an old baseball jersey and some lights, and occasionally she'll fantasize conversations with her. And dad is is wink, and he's like just the ultimate and tough parent, basically. I mean it's really.

SPEAKER_02 4:32

He's the baker that they've convinced to do this. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:36

Yeah, and because they don't live together, it's sort of at first you're like, wait, who's the what what is going on? What is this kind of family like dynamic it?

SPEAKER_01 4:42

It's so bizarre. And it's really difficult to describe just how poor these people they have nothing. Well, they've got to pick and some chickens. Yeah, they've got a lot of animals, but nothing else. I mean, there's no phone, there's no you know, you don't wash clothes, there's like they have nothing there.

SPEAKER_03 4:57

I think she's stolen the because she says she steals the pants later on.

SPEAKER_01 5:00

It's like me when the mist goes away. Yeah. And they do go out, like you say, on the other side of the levee in this like raft that they've made up out of an old pickup truck. Yeah. And they go out there and they sort of talk about how brilliant the b the bathtub life is and how terrible the people on the other side of the levee with their like p food in plastic and Hush Puppy's giving a sort of narration and she's saying how oh Daddy says that he feels sorry for them because they don't have they have to have what we have.

SPEAKER_03 5:29

Yeah, they have to it's like it's always like a slave to the wage and all that sort of shit. They're they're more free and that sort of thing.

SPEAKER_01 5:34

They don't because it's always holiday time in the bathtub, and then we kind of zoom back to the bathtub. I think it's the first time you actually see it from above. It's like a horseshoe-shaped collection of fucking half of them, they're not even they wouldn't even qualify to be trailers. They're like bits of wood. It's a shantytown, effectively, like a really like low-quality one at that. Like a home like worse than homelessness almost. Yeah. So but anyway, the the whole crew's there, the whole town, they're all having a big party fireworks and um just holding fireworks in their hands. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:06

Even the kids.

SPEAKER_01 6:07

Yeah, so Hush Puppy's just holding a firework and letting it off.

SPEAKER_03 6:10

You're like, oh my god.

SPEAKER_01 6:11

But underneath it all, and and and Hush Puppy explicitly says it, they all know that one day the bathtub will be destroyed when the floods come because they live the wrong side of the levee, basically.

SPEAKER_03 6:22

Do you start seeing glimpses of the beast then?

SPEAKER_01 6:24

It's just after this bit. We go to school, we see them in school, which is like a one-room like shack again, and maybe five or six kids of all different ages being taught by this teacher, and she's telling that everyone's made of meat, animals are meat, children are meat, your meat, we're all meat. The curriculum it's all part of the buffet of the universe. And then she shows them she's got on her thigh, her inner thigh, like this tattoo of a sort of Warhoggy tattoo? Kind of giant boar with like big tusks that she calls an auroc. And she warns them that they're gonna come one day, the ice caps will melt and they'll come from the from the um the south. I think I did a year in that school.

SPEAKER_03 7:02

It's a di it's a very different curriculum than you're used to seeing.

SPEAKER_00 7:05

Yeah, she asks them if they're pussies. If you're gonna be pussies, you're not gonna make it in this world. Yeah. Unless the teacher.

SPEAKER_01 7:13

So anyway, we get that bit, and then Hush Poppy r returns home, but Wink is missing. And so she just kind of scavenges around for a little while, doesn't she? She's she starts worrying about oh, if he's gone too long, I'm gonna have to start eating my pets because she's got like a pet bird that she keeps and all sorts of.

SPEAKER_02 7:27

Listening to the heartbeat, thinking he he needs a poo, this one, I won't have that one, I'll have another one.

SPEAKER_01 7:32

Yeah, this is where uh she's having imaginary conversations with her mother while she's making this stew out of cat food on the hob. Fucking horrible. Like Have you ever tried it though?

SPEAKER_00 7:44

She sets the hob on fire with a flamethrower.

SPEAKER_03 7:46

Yeah. Well, I'd say. The hob. She uses a blow tool. Just away you go. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:55

So this starts and she puts this food on, and you can see straight away she's like cranked it up to a million, and there's everything in there. And then Dad turns up, Wink turns up, he's been missing for a little while, comes back in, wearing he sort of stumbles in wearing a hospital gown and a bracelet still on his wrist. So clearly, having escaped from some sort of facility or something, he's probably collapsed out somewhere and been taken in. And there he she's just sort of welcoming back when there's like the an explosion, isn't it?

SPEAKER_03 8:21

Well he he goes back home, and this is when this is the first time I realised they weren't living together. Yeah. He goes back to his trailer and she goes, and when she walks back in, she can see there's the smoke billowing out of the pan, and she's a bit like, fuck, I don't know what to do. And so she just kind of hides, and then she looks back over like a chair or something, and it just fucking goes then into flames, and then she really doesn't know what to do.

SPEAKER_01 8:42

Well, what she does do is heartbreak because it's such an amazing performance. She starts drawing a picture on the wall in Crayon. Um, she hides and draws, yeah, and says, Oh, if scientists ever know, you know, they'll know at least Hush Puppy was here because she'll say the same thing at the end of the film as well.

SPEAKER_03 8:57

And then her old man comes in, and you could tell he does love her here because he's not able, he's obviously not like capable of dealing with like a lot of stuff, you know, his emotions or whatever. But here you can tell he's concerned about her because his fucking place is on fire, and he's you know, flailing around trying to find her, trying to see if he can put the flames out. Thinking she might be in there. Well, he just doesn't know. She's she's hiding under a cardboard box basically, and he can't see her, and eventually he does find her and he fucking loses it with her. Yeah, he's like you know, he just like I think he hits her across the face, yeah, and he's like, you know, uh he just can't deal with it properly, you know.

SPEAKER_01 9:33

So he gives her a real hard time. But you are also being told the story from her perspective, so like often things are a bit unexplained or maybe a bit weirder than they could be because you're seeing it through the eyes of a six-year-old. Yeah. So is this this is then after this bit where they go running out, isn't it? And she they after he slaps her, she says, I hope you die, and when you die, I'm gonna eat birthday crazy. And he does and then she slaps him, she punches him in the chest and he collapses. Like causes a seizure or something, he kind of collapses. This is where my message is like, I'm at. Yeah, yeah. And then that's when at the exact moment that happens, you get a shot of the polar ice caps melting and these aurochs being starting to be freed from the so you've got the literal kind of end of the world and the the six-year-old seeing her dad and she's basically. It's the same thing for her, right? That's kind of the symbolism of it, right? Yeah. The end of the world, your daddy's.

SPEAKER_00 10:29

And I thought I thought he was genuinely dead. Then she goes to school, the teacher is like, Oh, do you want me to take you home? She's like, No, no, my daddy will pick me up. But then the teacher goes on her boat and she just walks home. Yeah, looks for the daddy in the bushes where he was last seen when he was having a seizure, and he's not there, and you're like, Well, she's also she does tell her though, because she takes some this weird medicine back.

SPEAKER_01 10:52

She goes, Oh, take this back. It's like a jar of herbs. Herbs or whatever it was, yeah. Because she takes it back to alternative remedies, I guess. Yeah. Because she takes it and buries it. Yeah. And later she'll sprinkle some on his face while he's asleep to try and save him. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:11

So the storm and sees all these alcoholics, and she sees the dad walking on the street. Yeah. Because that's when we kind of realize, oh, he's actually not dead. He just He's been on the piss. Yeah, he just went to get some drinks and they go to the and the storm is coming and they end up in the pub. What well what you would think that's a pub.

SPEAKER_03 11:33

There is a real kind of camaraderie around all the people that are there. Yeah. Yeah. But it does involve just hard drinking. Yeah. Yeah. All the time. It's not like a beer, it's bottles of.

SPEAKER_01 11:42

Well, because it's part of the philosophy of the bathtub is to live like every moment as this really extreme moment. So anyway, he takes her back from the pub back to his trailer and he like puts like a dividing line down the trailer. He's like, right, that's your half and this is my half. And then there's she's like really scared, and then the storm comes in and he tells her, get in the they've got like a raft inside, and the plan is basically just to wait until all the water comes up and just sit in the raft and let that take him away. And then he he like he gets really drunk and goes outside with a shotgun and he's firing it at the storm. You're like, fuck me.

SPEAKER_03 12:15

He he still wants her to toughen up, and he tries to show her how tough he is by like grabbing his gun and shooting into the air. Yeah. Later on, there's a there's a sequence where they're eating chick crab, and he is watching her for a little while, and she's sort of daintily like picking the crab, and he just fucking gets enraged, and he goes over to her and he rips it out, and he's like, No, you fucking do it like this, and he's beast it, is it? But you gotta beast it and he snaps it in half, and then he just like slaps it down and he chucks another one in front of her, and then he gets to the whole like other place because they're in like a yeah, they're all together in this commune of like they're all gonna beast it, but it's in like fucking hell, she's six. Yeah, and you're feeling like the pressure where she's trying to like break this thing, and eventually she does it, and they're all like whoa.

SPEAKER_01 12:56

And they're eating like animals, basically, really it's like you know, like a medieval banquet and stuff, like sucking throwing away. So yeah, there's the big storm, it's very frightening, and then we get the aftermath the next morning, like everything's been destroyed, most of the bathtub's gone, like the water level is up by the roof of the house, so they climb out there to look for survivors, and then eventually get onto their raft and go on a little tour around the local area trying to find people, basically.

SPEAKER_03 13:25

I thought this was like really the main sort of Hurricane Katrina bits for me. Yeah. I remember seeing all the rooftops and then you get houses with the things just you know spray painted on them if there was dead people inside. Yeah, yeah. It's pretty Sounds like Guernsey, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_01 13:40

A little bit This was worse than Guernsey if you imagine it. Wow, I can't. So they find a guy, Winston, another guy Edison, and they teach her to catch a catfish, don't they, with their bare hands. Yeah. And they bring it in the boat, and then he he's like, you gotta punch it, and he's like punching it with his bare fist to kill it. And then this is a bit where they go into the bar and all that you were talking about with the crab and all that stuff. You they you see some wild stuff, don't you? There's that tiny island with a horse just stuck on it.

SPEAKER_00 14:08

Yeah. But then they the the woman, the teacher, also says that in a few days, or we do know that there's salt in that water. Yeah. So all the fish will die and the trees will get dry. So because at the moment they're getting the catfish and all that, they just pick them by hand, yeah. They've got enough food, shrimp, all that is it's abundant, it's abundant, right? Yeah, short term. In yeah, and and then they this is where I found it confusing when they're all building on top of which I think is the school or the old school building, and they do all the spikes on top of the roof. Do you remember that? Yeah, I did see that. I didn't know what to do. What is the point of that? I didn't know. I didn't really that didn't make any sense to me, but because the the flood is the main issue, not anything coming from above. Yeah. But anyway, and they have like it's basically a little island which is a house, and they all sleep in there.

SPEAKER_01 15:00

They have a funeral for the for the people that died, but their funeral is like a big party. They don't, you know, allowed to see. Yeah, yeah, you're not allowed to be seen. No crying, he's like pointing out no crying.

SPEAKER_03 15:10

It's also stipulated how he wants his to be.

SPEAKER_00 15:12

Yeah. And then we see the the six-year-old. Yeah. They're asleep, and we see Roger, I think, and the dad, and some other guy, they are doing something with the body of a alligator or crocodile.

SPEAKER_01 15:29

That's there's two weeks past, like you say, and the water starts to sub subside, but everything's dying. Like it's just left in marsh, because like Chris says, it's got polluted water from the factories and all sorts of shit in it, so like everything is dying. And then you do see they've got this they call it a garfish on Wikipedia. I don't know, what it looks like a fucking alligator.

SPEAKER_03 15:51

Yeah, it looks like that. Yeah, there is like an alligator, but they've got a longer, narrower snout. I think they're even more sort of prehistoric than an alligator.

SPEAKER_01 15:58

Hush puppy sees them sneaking off with this like inflatable alligator thing and a load of petrol in the morning. And yeah, their plan, crazy plan, is to kind of row out there and blow up the levee. That will put the water back into the rich people's side and sort the bathtub out. So I think once the teacher works it out, doesn't she?

SPEAKER_00 16:17

Yeah, she follows them and then hushpoppy hides in the teacher's bolt. Yeah. And the teacher's like, Well, what are you doing? Blah blah blah.

SPEAKER_01 16:26

Wait, and in the end, basically Hush Poppy presses the Well, there's a big moment, isn't there, where she's the the teacher's saying, No, don't because she's somehow ends up with the detonator. So they've placed these explosives there, and dad Wink is going, blow it up, blow it up, and the teacher's going, Don't blow it up, and then boom, and she blows up the levee.

SPEAKER_00 16:45

And then you can see the water just going down. Yeah, when the levee breaks. But now there's just swamp. And you can see them walking and they're barely barely pulling their feet under the mud because it's so much mud, and everything's still dead.

SPEAKER_01 16:58

Yeah, she says it's it didn't matter that the water had gone. Sometimes things have broken so bad they can't be put back together, and that's what's happened to the bathtub. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:07

And we're getting every now and then we'll get a shot of these what we call rocks. And they seem to be getting bigger and bigger. Um, just charging sort of across the screen.

SPEAKER_01 17:17

So first they're they're defrosting in the ice, then they're moving actually moving across the ice, then they're in the deserts and stuff. What becomes really clear is they're getting closer and closer and closer.

SPEAKER_00 17:26

And they look like wild boars with horns.

SPEAKER_01 17:29

Yeah. And it's quite hard to tell how big they are as well, because I think they're enormous. I think it to me look like they were growing, but I don't know if that was just the perspective. There's a bit where they have an arm wrestle and he talks about his death with her, and that's a bit where he tells her not to cry and all that. She looks absolutely terrified.

SPEAKER_00 17:46

And this is where I sorry just to interrupt, but this is where I until where I've seen, because after they blow up the the levee, the there's an aerial shot, and you kind of see how everything is there's nothing green anymore, everything is a swamp and all that, and then there's another shot, and you can see the helicopter, and you you realize that the first image is from the helicopter, and the helicopter goes, This is a forbidden area or something, you shouldn't be here, no one should live here. Basically, get it.

SPEAKER_01 18:13

It's an evacuation. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:14

They order an evacuation. And that's where I I I I stopped watching because I went to bed.

SPEAKER_01 18:20

So pretty quickly they're taken off to a federal medical emergency shelter. Against their will. I mean against their will, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:28

They're like you know, like a horror film like dragged across the floorboards, but they're like clinging on to don't want to go.

SPEAKER_01 18:34

Yeah. This is their home as far as they're concerned. And everything we've just it's all been green and brown because we've been outside in nature the whole time, and suddenly you're in a like a really harshly lit fluorescent.

SPEAKER_02 18:43

I'm assuming this is people from the rich side of town who have helping in a very common, but they don't want to.

SPEAKER_01 18:50

It's the establishment, and you know, because these people have clearly rejected the rest of society, basically. I mean, it's as close to like indigenous people as you can really imagine anymore.

SPEAKER_03 18:59

And so even in the even in this it's like a field hospital kind of evacuation centre, isn't it? Yeah. And she's separated from Wink and kind of looking over, and he they do a procedure on him, which is never clear exactly what his condition is.

SPEAKER_01 19:14

He's told something away from the child. She's watching it, and she can just see him get suddenly really animated, and then I think he's uh We see a kind of He's sedated, isn't he?

SPEAKER_03 19:23

You know, like a surgical wound and staples together or whatever, and I guess he was told that you got some fucking terminal condition of some kind.

SPEAKER_01 19:31

But we also see her, like for the first time, like clean with her hair washed, in like wearing clothes that are like normal and so he comes around in intensive care, the dad, and then he he sort of has like this big strop and they try to sedate him again, and then he pretends, doesn't he, that he swallowed the medicine, but he hasn't spits it out after they've left and sort of sparks this mass exodus eventually. So he's got up and wandered out of the hospital, and he's seen loads of the other residents in the bathtub, and he gets the kids with them, and they so basically everybody just suddenly leaves the the emergency shelter and gets out, and he leads them all to a bus, and then he tries to shove Hush Puppy onto it without him. They're like off you go on your own, sort of thing, you'll be safer without me, is basically what he's saying. But she what she's having none of that, isn't it? That's when he she like runs off off the bus, and that's when he says, Oh, my what is he it says, my blood is eating itself, I'm dying. Yeah. He tells her, I can't look after you, so you have to get on that bus.

SPEAKER_02 20:38

It's the only thing that's gonna That community's gonna be the one that looks after you. Yeah. You're nearly seven now, you've got to stand on your own.

SPEAKER_03 20:45

Go and get a job and he's obviously known and he's been trying to, in his way, toughen her up and prepare her for a life without him, even though living separately in his own way. And I I guess now it's just like it's escalating, it's getting closer and closer.

SPEAKER_02 20:58

With the loss of the the mother who you said is kind of a shrine or or whatever.

SPEAKER_03 21:03

She has a thing now, doesn't she, where she sees a light.

SPEAKER_01 21:05

Yeah, they they they take everybody back to the bathtub and she sees a light out on the on the water. So they get their own ridiculous if they're on a life buoy, aren't they?

SPEAKER_03 21:15

They do say buoy, I can never I can never reconcile that.

SPEAKER_01 21:19

Yeah. And so they swim out like a load of these kids, it looks fucking miles, just on this rubber flotation device, out to this like floating basically a floating brothel groan inducingly called the Elysium Fields, where she, you know, it is basically like a place where men go to have the company of women. Yes. And so there's a bunch of kids there now. And she found she's found her mother. The cook. Yeah. And she the the woman's really kind to her, doesn't appear to recognise her even though she's like convinced that this is her mother that they found in this place. There's a bit She she picks her up because they're all tired, and she picks her up and holds her. And Hush Puppy says, I can remember being held twice in my life. Yeah. Like what a lovely thing it was to be held by this woman. And yes, and she does remember the two times, one of her when she's a tiny baby, and another one of her dad doing that, I think. Anyway. So they don't answer the question of whether this is the mother or not, they just move on, and she just decides that's it, I'm going back home, going back to the bathtub. So we've just have this weird moment out in this brothel and then go back home. And they arrive back at the bathtub just as the Orox arrive at the bathtub as well. Yeah. They're fucking massive. They are absolutely massive, and people are running away in terror. Well like trailer size or but bigger than, say, like an an American school bus. Right. Like those big yellow buses, like that. You know, six years old, tiny. Yeah. So they're all stampeding towards her, and she sort of kneeled. She's crocodile done easily. Yeah, she sort of puts her hand down. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They still and they all stop and they stare right at her, and she says, I've got to take care of mine to it. Like really sort of fierce for a six-year-old. And they demure to her and sort of go, mm-hmm, and all these like little noises, stuff, and then they slink off and turn away. So she's run all that way just to turn Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So that's that's it, really. And then she goes back to Wink and it's pretty clear he's dying. And it's a goodbye, yeah. It's a goodbye. So she brings him his last favourite meal, and he tells her how well she did. And then he's given this like he dies, and then he's given this like Viking funeral kind of thing, isn't it? That's what he said he wanted to be put on a boat and set on fire. And so he's like, okay, that's what we're gonna do then. So they send him off and they have a big party, basically. And then it ends on a bit of narration. She says something, I see I'm a little piece of a big, big universe, and that makes things right. When I die, the scientists of the future they're gonna find it all, and they're gonna know that once there was a hush puppy and she lived with her daddy in the bathtub. And that bit did actually get me a little bit at the end.

SPEAKER_02 24:07

Yeah. Okay, what a bizarre sounding film. And obviously, there's you know, those oryx seems to be the fears of something, is it?

SPEAKER_03 24:14

I guess it's like the metaphorical fear and she confronts her fear and wins the day in that sense. It's it's sort of s if it wasn't for the oras, it's it's a fairly straight film in the sense that it's just a family sort of drama, whatever, but it has this sort of fantastical element put into it. But generally speaking, it's fairly straight, and when you're watching it, first of all, you know, the the the father has a kind of arc because he seems like an arsehole, but he's probably been raised in exactly the same way these days.

SPEAKER_02 24:44

And had the trauma of maybe losing his wife and things like that. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 24:47

It's all really fucked up, and there's they're all completely, you know, uneducated, and it's very, very sort of rough and raw and whatever. And he is trying to do his best by her, even though he doesn't really know how to articulate things very well and all that. And he sort of does right by the way in the end. But it's it's a fairly bleak film, I think. But there is sort of some some sort of optimism towards the end, you know.

SPEAKER_01 25:06

I don't know. I found this one a really strange one. It's sometimes like genuinely really very moving and and other times like just disappearing straight up its own ass, like like really pretentious, I thought, sometimes, like particularly that Elysium Field scene, and like, oh come on, man, I get it. Like that was the bar in the in the afterlife where people would go and all that sort of stuff. So it's like I don't I thought it's sometimes really heavy-handed. I didn't really know. Like, I got the idea that the story is being told from her perspective and it made things seem mysterious and all those sorts of things, but I also didn't really know like what it was trying to say. It sort of fetised the sort of poverty aspect of it all, like going, Oh, isn't wouldn't it be great to live like this? And I was just looking at it the whole time thinking, this looks fucking awful. This is horrendous living conditions, awful for a child.

SPEAKER_02 25:52

Like, you know, the relationship is is like and then the movie doesn't really take You're on the rich side, you've been spoiled, they've got freedom, they're really living, they don't have to be tied in. It's trying to give you that sort of message, but you're just we were talking about going to work, weren't we? Oh my god, who's making up these hours of work that you would say this works a bit better, is what I mean.

SPEAKER_03 26:14

No, I would take my my situation out of that.

SPEAKER_01 26:17

Yeah, but the performance I think what saves it is the performance from the kid is so fucking special. Like it really is an amazing performance. Because there's loads of stuff that's wrong with it. I thought the score was overbearing and it looked like it was being shot by somebody who had Parkinson's because like they couldn't this film needed a tripod or something. Do you know what I mean? Like the budget was real documentary style, was it? They needed a thousand dollars extra for a decent tripod, that's all they needed. So But it was a budget film then.

SPEAKER_02 26:44

It was 1.8 mil, yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 26:46

Well, no, we've we've reviewed cheaper films. I think the big thing about this is written by white people. And I find that a little bit troubling when the cast is very poor and very black. That's uh okay, because I until it just didn't feel like that be an authentic exactly.

SPEAKER_02 27:06

It had been a in my mind, it had been like a um a white kind of um trailer park family that you were describing. Um, but this is I suppose you say in the in the deep south and um it's on the on the levee and that. Um I don't know, it depends on the environment you've grown up in and everything. But coming from the and obviously I haven't seen this, I'm just listening to the review, but the images that I've got in my mind from the review from this young young girl's point of view seems a really interesting take on the the movie, and obviously all those auric kind of things, uh a child fears and the fears of losing her dad and uh having to come up in the world by herself. And every and everything else, and you know, each you know, that that kind of moment that she's she's pushed against him and he's had a had an attack or something and had a seizure, um the ice melting and and things like that, you know, beginning that first. Like I said, it was genuinely very moving and quite clever at some points.

SPEAKER_03 28:20

Quite clever, yeah. It was released in twenty twenty twelve. Okay. Or maybe twenty thirteen. But it did the uh it did the awards um parade in twenty twelve. Uh it won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, won the Camera Door at Ka at Cannes. Wow. Okay. Um and it what got four Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture. So well received um by critics and one point extraordinary.

SPEAKER_02 28:52

Has Champ done any other films since then?

SPEAKER_01 28:56

I don't know. I don't not that I know of.

SPEAKER_02 28:58

No. I've not heard of him.

SPEAKER_01 29:00

Um but on the show. She's the one on the the two leads, uh Wallace, Quinn Quinn what is her name, Sidie. Quan Vishani? Yeah, Quen Vashani. Wallace and and the other Chan Dwight Dwight Henry Dwight Henry. They they were both really sensational actors.

SPEAKER_04 29:15

Okay. So for that alone. Strong recommend? Strong recommend. Nice.

SPEAKER_00 29:22

What did you think? Well, you didn't see the end, did you? Well, I didn't see the end, but it was a tough watch, I'm not gonna lie. And uh I did watch it with Kira. After five minutes, she was on her phone. Um second screen. Yeah. Yeah, well no, she just kind of not refused to watch it, but she wasn't really high. She was lying on love, for sure. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:44

She's massive racist as well, isn't she?

SPEAKER_00 29:45

And yeah, she is as well. So um and she hates kids as well, so it's checking lots of boxes for that. Yeah. Um I don't know. I also I could I could be wrong here, but I also found it really disturbing that there was a lot of uh uh uh shots of this very young girl in just her pants. Quite close up with the pants.

SPEAKER_01 30:07

I thought there was a lot of shots of her in distress. I didn't like I didn't find there was a sexual element to it at all, so that didn't bother me. I there was a few if you now that you point it out, but it didn't I but she was in distress a lot and it's a six-year-old. She was crying, she looked scared.

SPEAKER_00 30:20

It was it was it was difficult, and and I'm not gonna lie, that's why I put it on and I was like, well, I'm gonna watch it. And then my eyes were closing, and I was like, this is not uh I it didn't keep me interested and didn't keep me uh you know to be I I want to figure out what's gonna happen. I've seen the the flying uh pigs thing, the aurox. I've seen I was like, okay, this is gonna be something's gonna happen. They're gonna come to a head and one of them wins. And I knew the dad's gonna die.

SPEAKER_01 30:47

Pigs look really good though, eh? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:48

Yeah, they did look good.

SPEAKER_01 30:49

Considering this is how cheap the film was, the pigs looked amazing. I don't know how they did it. Well, actually, I do know how they did it. They put costumes on little tiny pigs and filmed them from below, but it looks very effective. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:59

So yeah, that's all all that being said strong, recommend, recommend. Strong.